


Paper Kisses

by bbluejoseph



Category: Twenty One Pilots
Genre: Love Letters, M/M, Poetry, basically they read the love letters they wrote to one another in high school, high school sweethearts, moving in, pure fluff, they maybe kiss a lil
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-11
Updated: 2019-08-11
Packaged: 2020-08-18 21:37:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20198563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bbluejoseph/pseuds/bbluejoseph
Summary: "I don't think it's shitty," he says. At Tyler's scoffing, Josh tilts his chin, presses the pages to his heart. "I love it.""But it's not perfect," Tyler says."It doesn't need to be."





	Paper Kisses

**Author's Note:**

> this is very short and kinda drabble-y! i hope you enjoy!

Soft fingers on paper, letters and sometimes whole words smeared by careless young fingers. There is only quiet, quiet and the occasional sound of papers rustling.

Small piles of envelopes are scattered around them, dumped from shoeboxes and freed from between the pages of well-worn books. They pull the letters from their snug paper wrappings, read them, and react--feel something, whether joy or pain or nostalgia, often a mix of the three--before putting them back in their pile for the other to read.  
  
Tyler only moved in last month. It was his idea to read the letters, when he stumbled upon the boxes wedged beneath Josh's bed. As it seems, he brought a few boxes of his own, letters carefully sorted by date and cardboard sealed with packing tape.

These letters are old, from their time as teenagers, when they were younger and apart from one another and in love. They still are in love, but it's a different kind of love, now; more like coming home than exploring a new world. Neither of them seems to mind.  
  
Josh loves Tyler's letters, has loved them for years. After high school, they had switched to calling on the phone; it was memorable, more like being together in person, at the time, but not recordable, not written down on lined paper in Tyler's neatest handwriting. Tyler has always had neat handwriting. Josh thinks it beautiful.  
  
They've been looking over the letters for about twenty minutes now. Josh carefully opens one envelope, unfolds the letter, and a few small, papery items fall out. They're faded and dry, but he recognizes them as the petals from the hydrangeas that grew in Tyler's front yard. He was sixteen, _they_ were sixteen, living with their parents and four thousand miles apart.  
  
Josh reads the letter, and gently puts the petals back into the envelope for safekeeping.   
  
Tyler is frowning at the letter in his hands. Josh watches him for a second, his narrowed eyes flicking across the page as he reads. He has such long eyelashes.

"What?"

His love hands him the letter. His frown turns to a half smile. "Just some shitty poetry on my part."

**Cloudy breaths on windowpanes, the smell of sea air.  
** **We reach for each other at the same time.  
** **The sun shines through the curtains to light up your eyes.  
** **You say they are brown, but I see a hint of gold.  
** **Something in the air is sharp, insistent. I cannot place a name to it.  
** **I can only watch your lungs rise and fall, rise and fall, like the tides.**

Poetry has always been Tyler's way of going through his feelings. Often, when they were teenagers, he would send poems to Josh. In some of them, Josh remembers, Tyler mentioned him by name. Most of the time it was in little references, made vague by pride and prose. Josh loved it all the same.

"I don't think it's shitty," he says. At Tyler's scoffing, Josh tilts his chin, presses the pages to his heart. "I love it."

"But it's not perfect," Tyler says.

"It doesn't need to be."

They stare at one another for a moment, and then Tyler leans in to press their lips together, holding Josh's jaw in his hand for just a moment, just a moment.

"I hate you," Tyler says, after they disconnect, but his lips are twisted up into a smile.

Josh smiles back, fondly, at the man he loves. “No, you don’t.” And he’s right.


End file.
